Worm Wiggles into Infosec Trade Show

Security firm McAfee detected 50,000 instances of attacks by the “Slammer” worm at last week’s Infosec trade show in Europe, The Register reports.

“What’s even more disturbing is the nature of this virus,” McAfee security consultant Greg Day told The Register. “It is almost archaic in security terms. The ‘Slammer’ worm has been fixable for ages. In short, there is no excuse for this to have even been present at the show, especially by so-called security companies.”

The worm’s presence alone may not have indicated an actual infection, as Internet security company MessageLabs told The Register it didn’t detect any problems at the show.

However, worms aside, testing firm SecureTest indicated that security was lacking with the show’s communal PC service, The Register reports. Unknown users could have disabled antivirus software on the networked PCs.

“Given that the Infosec show attracts some from the hacking underworld, it would seem a little irresponsible to offer delegates use of such insecure systems,” Ken Munro of SecureTest told The Register.

For related news coverage, read McAfee Unveils Threat Center Portal.

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.

— Compiled by Dave Gradijan